Death of capital punishment?

Executions will resume in the United States following the Supreme Court's recent rejection of a challenge to the use of a three-drug cocktail for lethal injections. Yet the global trend seems to be moving away from capital punishment and controversy swirls over the most 'humane' method of execution.

The state of Georgia has scheduled an execution for May 21, which would end a moratorium that has been in force since last September, when the Supreme Court said it would hear appeals from two death row inmates in Kentucky. Virginia plans to execute inmates in May-July, while Texas has said that executions will resume in June. If William Earl Lynd is executed in Georgia, he will become the 1,100th person to receive this justice since the Supreme Court overturned a temporary ban on capital punishment in 1976. Yet further legal challenges to current lethal injection practices are likely.

Attitudes to capital punishment

The United States and Japan are the only industrialised democracies where the death penalty is still enforced. Governments in Poland and Peru have floated the idea of reintroducing the death penalty for certain crimes. Yet the global trend seems to be moving away from capital punishment. International organisations such as the EU have hardened in their opposition:

The death penalty is incompatible with membership of the EU and other international bodies, which acts as a strong deterrent to reintroducing the practice.
EU pressure was instrumental in convincing Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom to veto recent legislation that would have facilitated the death penalty being enforced after a long moratorium; Brussels would likely speak up if other countries made such moves.

China, notorious for executing large numbers of inmates, sometimes for relatively minor offences, has recently reduced the number of people put to death. It has also moved away from the traditional bullet in the back of the head towards lethal injection. The number of executions, and range of offences carrying the death penalty, is likely to be reduced to avert international criticism.

The death penalty remains popular among voters in much of the United States. Yet levels of public approval have dropped since the early 1990s, and may well continue to do so. Periodic botched executions will drive this trend, as would formal exoneration of an executed inmate. A number of people have been released from death row after being proven innocent, yet nobody has been found innocent after being put to death.

'Humane' methods?

This leaves the issue of 'humane' execution. Opponents of the death penalty argue that the term is an oxymoron, while its proponents suggest the brief infliction of pain can add to the deterrent effect of capital punishment. Yet several factors may drive moves to find more acceptable methods, namely:

a desire to ensure the psychological wellbeing of staff carrying out executions;
a desire to satisfy public opinion, a majority of which would find gruesome executions distasteful; and
a desire by capital punishment supporters to neutralise the argument that the death penalty be abolished because of concerns over human rights.

This means the lethal injection will continue to be the favoured form of execution in the United States. Alternatives such as electrocution and the gas chamber have largely been abandoned because of concerns about the suffering they inflict. While alternatives such as hanging and the guillotine may be more 'humane', the former is prone to mishaps -- and has racist overtones -- and the latter is a gruesome thing to behold. Attention will turn to a more humane cocktail of drugs to end inmates' lives, which may well be modelled on methods used to put down animals.